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RUFUS KING: SOLDIER, EDITOR, 
AND STATESMAN 



BY 
GENERAL CHARLES KING 




Reprinted from the Wisconsin Magazine of History 
Volume IV, Number 4, June, 1921 









i 




GENERAL RUFUS KING 

From a photograph taken in May, 1861. General Charles King characterizes this as "the best 

picture we ever had of Father." 



RUFUS KING: SOLDIER, EDITOR, 
AND STATESMAN 

General Charles King 

My first direct American ancestor in the paternal line 
was Richard King, who came from Kent, England, to Amer- 
ica in 17,10. The King genealogy for the first half -century 
or so thereafter is somewhat obscure; but Richard King of 
Scarboro, Maine, a son of the original immigrant, stands 
out as a prosperous shipbuilder and lumber dealer, who had 
served as captain and commissary at the siege of Louisburg 
in King George's War. His son, Rufus King, the first, 
served as senator from the state of New York for upwards 
of twenty years. He also served as minister to England in 
the administration of George Washington, and again for a 
short time twenty years later. The second son of Rufus, 
Charles King, was long the editor of the New York American 
and later for many years the president of Columbia College. 

My father, Rufus King, eldest son of Charles King, was 
born at Number 3 Pearl Street, New York City, January 
26, 1814. He grew up in New York City and received his 
earlier education there. When only fifteen years of age he 
entered West Point and was graduated at the age of nine- 
teen, being probably the youngest graduate who has ever 
gone out of that institution. He was commissioned brevet 
Second Lieutenant of Engineers and assigned to duty as 
assistant to Captain Robert E. Lee, United States Engineers, 
in the construction of Fortress Monroe. Later he was or- 
dered to duty on the improvement of the navigation of the 
upper Hudson, with headquarters at Albany. From his 
association with Captain Lee he conceived an affection and 
respect for that officer which the stress of Civil War did not 
destroy. In the winter of 1861-62, when my father was 
in command of a brigade in the Union army, he was sta- 
tioned at Arlington, the estate of General Lee, opposite 

3 



4 General Charles King 

Washington. My mother, who joined him there, took 
it upon herself to sort out the more valuable items of 
clothing and other personal property belonging to the Lees 
and have them boxed and labeled with a view to restoring 
them to their owner at the close of the War. Whether this 
was ever done, or not, I never knew. In 1863, about the 
time of Lee's invasion of Maryland, Father's command 
captured his son, W. H. F. Lee, near Yorktown. General 
King succeeded in sending word to Richmond that the son 
was in safe hands; I was afterward told that shortly after 
General Lee got back from Pennsylvania messages were ex- 
changed between him and my father on the subject. Father 
had a high opinion of General Lee, regarding him as the peer 
of any man in either army, whether from the viewpoint of a 
soldier or a gentleman, but deplored his taking up arms 
against the union of states. 

In 1836, being still but a brevet second lieutenant and 
believing that the army in peace time offered a very poor 
opportunity for a "career," Father resigned his commission 
and accepted an appointment as assistant engineer in the 
survey of the New York and Erie Railway. He ran the 
survey of a great part of the Susquehanna Division of the 
line, and later as far west as Olean, New York. By this time 
the road was in financial straits; building was discontinued, 
and in 1838 Rufus King went back to Albany, there to begin 
life anew. 

There he entered the office of the Albany Evening Journal, 
of which Thurlow Weed was editor and proprietor, in the 
capacity of associate editor. Besides attending to his news- 
paper work he took up the study of law. In 1839 William 
H. Seward, a personal and political friend of Weed, became 
governor of New York. He appointed my father adjutant 
general of the state, which position he held during the four 
years of Seward's administration as governor, learning 
journalism, meantime, under the able tutelage of Weed. 



Rufus King: Soldier, Editor, and Statesman 5 

Some years before this, in 1836, Father had married Ellen 
Eliot, who was a direct descendant of John Eliot, the noted 
Apostle to the Indians. She died within a year, and in 
1843 he married Susan Eliot, a younger sister of his first 
wife. While engaged in engineer work in the army he had 
been sent west to make a temporary survey of the boundary 
line between the states of Michigan and Ohio and Indiana. 
This was his first glimpse of the West and he was much im- 
pressed with the commercial and other possibilities of the 
country adjoining Lake Michigan. An acquaintance in the 
engineer service interested him in ]Milwaukee and in 1845 
he was induced to remove thither to become editor and part 
owner of the Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette. It was in 
September, 1845 that he arrived at Milwaukee from Buffalo 
on the old steamer Empire State. For a time he made his 
home with his wife and infant boy at the old United States 
Hotel, which stood on the corner of Huron and East Water 
Streets. He then removed to a little house on Jefferson 
Street, nearly opposite the site of the present Layton Art 
Gallery, where his second child, Fanny, was born, October 
11, 1846. 

In 1847, I think. Father moved into a little frame house 
at the northeast corner of Mason and Van Buren Streets, 
owned by Alanson Sweet, who occupied the next house to 
the east, and there, at "King's Corner," as it came to be 
known, he lived until the spring of 1861, when he left Mil- 
waukee, as he supposed, to take passage for Italy as United 
States minister resident at the court of the Papal States. 
During all these years he had remained editor-in-chief, and 
during most of them proprietor, of the Milwaukee Sentinel. 

In 1848 he served in the second constitutional convention 
and there bore an important part in framing the constitution 
of the state. Although he was a Whig, and Wisconsin was 
then over-whelmingl}^ Democratic, it is a matter of family 
tradition that he could have gone to Washington as one of 



6 General Charles King 

the new state's first senators had he so desired. But he felt 
that the building up of the Sentinel required his personal 
attention, and he declined the opportunity thus opened to 
him. 

Although a graduate of West Point, my father took no 
part in the Mexican War. Like General Grant, who had to 
take part in it because he was still in the army, Rufus King 
thoroughly disapproved of that war, although as a soldier 
he took great pride in the record made by the little army of 
regulars under General Scott and General Taylor. 

Father took great interest in the public schools of Mil- 
waukee. He was the city's first superintendent of schools, 
and served for many years without salary or emolument, 
examining the teachers, prescribing the course of study, and 
doing most of the printing required for the schools at his 
oflSce and at his own expense. In the financial panic of 1857 
the Sentinel was wrecked, and Rufus King was forced to dis- 
pose of the property to Jermain and Brightman, who, realiz- 
ing its value, came from New York to buy it. King accepted 
the editorship under the new management, along with an 
interest in the business. Being impoverished, however, his 
friends provided in the winter of 1858-59 a salary of $2,000 
for the office of superintendent of schools. This was the first 
time my father ever received a cent for his services to the 
school system, but this income did not last long. For years 
even the Democratic papers had been in the habit of making 
reference to King as "the highly eflScient superintendent of 
schools"; but no sooner was a salary attached to the office 
than his Democratic friends concluded that he had labored 
too long in this capacity, and at the next election a very 
worthy and efficient Democrat was chosen to succeed him. 

Rufus King was a member of the first Board of Regents 
of the University of Wisconsin, serving in this capacity until 
1854. He interested himself enthusiastically in all that per- 
tained to the development of the city of Milwaukee. He 



Rufus King: Soldier, Editor, and Statesman 7 

joined the fire department and was for long years the fore- 
man of Engine Company Number 1 . He was major general 
of state militia and captain of the first American company of 
militia in the city. He practically organized the Milwaukee 
Boat Club in 1856, with a membership composed of the 
leading professional and business men of the city. Alexander 
Mitchell, Jerome Brigham, the Ogden brothers, David and 
Tom, Charles F. Ilsley, Norman J. Emmons, Dr. John K. 
Bartlett, and a score of other men prominent in Milwaukee 
society were for several years active in the Boat Club. King 
took great interest in the organization of the Musical Society, 
and the great influx of Germans, many of whom were 
charming and cultivated people, made this society one of 
Milwaukee's greatest successes in the early days of the city. 

Very many men who later became prominent in Milwau- 
kee and Wisconsin politics came to Milwaukee with letters 
of introduction to Rufus King. I distinctly remember Carl 
Schurz as one of these. In politics King was a pronounced 
Whig, having been educated under William H. Seward and 
Thurlow Weed of New York, and the Sentinel was for long 
years an exponent of Whig policies and doctrines ; but it was 
the first paper of any prominence in the state to support the 
Republican platform and to become an earnest advocate of 
the candidacy of Fremont and Dayton for presidency and 
vice presidency in 1856. As the campaign of 1860 ap- 
proached, it was but natural that King and the Sentinel 
should be earnest supporters of William H. Seward for the 
presidency ; but the verdict of the party at the Chicago con- 
vention was all sufficient, and King, although personally 
disappointed by reason of his friendship and affection for 
Seward, employed all his influence in Wisconsin, both per- 
sonally and editorially, to procure the election of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Having lost the superintendency of schools with its 
newly -established salary, in the spring of 1861 Rufus King 



8 Grr^i^.j] C'^.7'^V-:« Ki'^if 

'went to Washington. .-- -^ .- - ^- . _^ 

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was told the o:3oe hs-d l:»ee"n rh~eii to :. " snd tns": 1\'^ z 

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r OTerfr:i: , : : 

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li_ _ - __ _ ; "rice of the UriT-e-f ^tates^ 

ilii.: cii MmistiS" B.es:aeLi to ihe Papa. States 7 ' " : iz:- 



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Rufus King: Soldier, Editor, and Statesman 9 

by President Lincoln in May, 1861, and he returned to Mil- 
waukee to assist in the organization of the first Wisconsin 
regiments. Here the governor and legislature appointed 
him brigadier general of Wisconsin volunteers, in the hope 
that President Lincoln would be induced thereby to form 
the first few regiments of Wisconsin men into one brigade 
with King as its commander. 

In August, 1861, King was at Kalorama Heights, on the 
northern outskirts of Washington, organizing his brigade. 
He had with him at this time the Second, Fifth, and Sixth 
Wisconsin Infantry, the Nineteenth Indiana, and, tempo- 
rarily, four or five regiments from other states, which were 
subsequently transferred. This was the beginning of the 
organization which subsequently became famous as the Iron 
Brigade. During the period of its organization, on many a 
pleasant evening President Lincoln appeared at General 
King's camp, accompanied by Secretary Seward and the 
relations between the brigade commander and the President 
and his Secretary of State were most cordial. 

The relations were suddenly interrupted, however, in 
September. At midnight an order came to General King 
to move his brigade to and across Chain Bridge and support 
the brigade of a junior officer, William F. Smith of Vermont. 
General McClellan, who had been graduated at West Point 
several years after General King, had been called to Wash- 
ington and placed in supreme command. He was sur- 
rounded by a group of young and eager officers of the regu- 
lar service, and it is possible that, as he only once visited 
General King's big command and scarcely knew him, he 
thought King too intimate with the Commander-in-Chief. 
At all events we crossed Chain Bridge in the darkness of 
night (1 was attached to the brigade in the capacity of 
mounted orderly) and General King, although empowered 
by the army regulations to assume command of the troops 
in the field over a junior officer, nevertheless in all courtesy 



10 General Charles King 

reported to General Smith, and I well remember the words: 
"General Smith, I have brought my entire brigade with me, 
and am here to support you in any way that you may desig- 
nate." Boy that I was, I could not but notice General 
Smith's embarrassment. Yet what he requested of my 
father was that he should leave on the south side of the Po- 
tomac three-fourths of his brigade and himself with one 
regiment retire to the north side, leaving General Smith to 
carry out the orders of General McClellan. In all subordina- 
tion General King accepted the arrangement, believing that 
it would presently be corrected, and before long it was. 
King's brigade was ordered to take station at Arlington, 
the estate of his old friend and superior, General Lee. There 
the brigade had the best possible station, and General King 
every opportunity under his new division commander, Irvin 
McDowell, to train and instruct his brigade. Thus it came 
about that before March, 1862 the brigade was in a high 
state of soldierly efficiency and General King was almost 
disappointed when promoted to the command of the division, 
being reluctant to give over the immediate command of the 
brigade he had organized and developed. 

In April, 1862 the division made its swift march on Fred- 
ricksburg. A short time thereafter Fremont, becoming dis- 
satisfied with his command of the mountain department of 
Virginia, and smarting under the criticism of the Secretary 
of War, asked to be relieved, and a presidential order was 
issued assigning Rufus King to the command of this impor- 
tant department and the large force there engaged. That 
night the officers of the division came to King and begged 
that he would not leave them just at the outset of a critical 
campaign (for McClellan had been beaten back from the 
Peninsula). King therefore begged leave to decline the pro- 
motion in order that he might remain in command of his 
division in the fighting that was impending in the immediate 
vicinity of Washington. He ventured to suggest that it 



Rufus King: Soldier, Editor, and Statesman 1 1 

might strengthen the Union cause and at the same time give 
joy to thousands of German soldiers if Fremont's command 
were given to Franz Sigel, and this was done. 

On the twenty-eighth of x\ugust, 1862, after many weari- 
some marches to and fro under confusing orders from higher 
authority, King's division moving on Centerville along the 
W arrenton Turnpike just about sunset was fiercely attacked 
by Stonewall Jackson on its left flank. It was a complete 
surprise to King, whose orders gave him to suppose that 
Jackson was at or beyond Centerville, much farther to the 
east. Five brigades of Jackson's infantry and four batteries 
of field artillery concentrated their fire on King's old brigade 
in an hour's fierce fighting before dark. From this time it 
became known as the Iron Brigade, for although one-third of 
its number were shot down in their tracks the brigade never 
yielded an inch. At one o'clock in the morning following this 
severe action, having received information that Stonewall 
Jackson with his entire command was in the immediate 
vicinity, King, after holding a council with the brigade 
commanders, ordered the division to retire to the southeast 
toward Manassas Junction, where he was sure of finding 
support. The next day, August 29, late in the afternoon, 
General Lee, with the remainder of the Confederate army, 
effected a junction with Jackson near the field from which 
King had retired. ]\Ionths afterwards General Pope claimed 
that he had sent positive orders to General King the evening 
of the twenty-eighth to hold his ground and he would sup- 
port him, in spite of which King abandoned his position, 
thus inferentially making King responsible for the junction 
of Lee and Jackson on the twenty -ninth and the disastrous 
second battle of Manassas, which followed. Had King re- 
mained he would have been engulfed in the morning; but 
he never received such orders, nor was there ever found any 
officer who could remember having received any such order 
from General Pope to General King. Such an order was 



12 General Charles King 

sent by Pope to General McDowell, who was lost in the 
woods somewhere in the vicinity of the stream of Bull Run, 
far in the rear of the battlefield of King's division. I have 
in my possession General Pope's original letter to General 
King in which he says: "I am perfectly satisfied you did 
the very best you could under the circumstances," adding 
further that the ofiicer by whom he supposed he sent that 
order was not known to him by name, nor did he know the 
oflBcer was on King's staff.^ It was easily proved that King 
received no such order. But Pope's official report was not 
made public until the spring of 1863, and then the impression 
became disseminated that General King, by disobedience of 
orders, was responsible for the junction of Lee and Jackson. 
For long years he had to bear the stigma, and it ruined his 
health and broke his heart. He should have called for a 
court of inquiry and had the matter threshed out; but he 
showed Pope's full and complete reply to his letter, complete- 
ly exonerating him, to Seward and to Lincoln and to Stan- 
ton, and they all expressed themselves as satisfied with it 
and advised King that he should feel so too. There were 
political reasons in favor of not dragging the matter to light, 
since it must inevitably discredit Pope, and General King 
was one of those men who, conscious of his own rectitude, 
submitted to adversity in silence. 

In the fall of 1863 Governor Randall desired to return 
home, and Secretary Seward induced my father, whose health 
was now impaired, to resign his commission in order to take 
up the duties at the Papal Court which he had thrust aside 
in 1861. Here for four years he had a delightful association 
with Pope Pius the Ninth and his secretary of state, Cardinal 
Antonelli. While here it became his duty to receive and 
entertain General McClellan, and to present him to the 
Pope. While here, also, he was instrumental in the capture 

iThis entire episode with Pope's letter in full is discussed in my pamphlet, Gaines- 
ville (Milwaukee, 1903). 



Rufus King: Soldier, Editor, and Statesman 13 

of John H. Surratt, who was implicated in the conspiracy 
which resulted in the assassination of President Lincoln and 
the attempted assassination of Secretary Seward. Surratt 
was sent back to the United States long after his fellow con- 
spirators had been hanged, and in his case the jury dis- 
agreed. 

In 1867, the temporal power of the Papacy having been 
abolished, the mission to Rome was abolished by Con- 
gress, and Rufus King returned to America, paying a brief 
visit to Milwaukee in the fall of that year. Later he was 
made deputy collector of the port of New York and took up 
his residence in that city. Increasing ill health, however, 
compelled him to lead the life of an invalid from 1870 until 
his death, October 13, 1870. He is buried with his father 
and grandfather in the old churchyard of Grace Church, 
Jamaica, Long Island. 



146 



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